Craigslist Finds and
Sales
What we have
here is a family farm and we all share equally, and will be for some time into
the future hopefully. The house I’m intending to build will be built primarily
with materials I have already accumulated here on the farm. In fact almost 90
percent of the materials I will need in terms of concrete block, and logs, and
structural wood, will come from the farm and will just require labor to put it together
or process it into a form I can use.
I have no need to
go into debt, or take out a mortgage as our farm is free and clear and all we
have to do is pay taxes and insurance to be able to live comfortably. This is
in part due to our parent’s and grandparent’s efforts to assure us that we always
had a place to live. My goal although I may not stay here the rest of my life
is to have just that. A place I can always come home to. It doesn’t mean that
this will be my last house; it just means I am taking care of my individual
needs and knowing I have security here for a long length of time. I would like
to build other places, and do other things now that I can in some ways expand
my horizons. This is just a start.
I have listed
and sold a fair amount of stuff on Craigslist as well as other places. At the
same time I have found a bunch of deals on Craigslist and continue to do so. I find
it is something you need to look at daily, even if all you do is to look in the
free section of Craigslist and be amazed at the deals that are waiting for you
there. I see it as sort of a barometer of how well our society is doing by analyzing
what it is that people give away for free. No matter what one would want it can be found
or sold on Craigslist in one form or another, including the trafficking of
humans and animals to some extent. Out right you can see Craigslist disclaimers
saying certain things won’t be tolerated but still posters seem to find a way
around that, as in the case of prostitution and casual sex ads.
my greenhouse at end of season last year and some of the plants that were left .
Just today I saw
an electric hospital bed for free that allows you to place it in a regular bed
and it will sit you up by an electric motor. The sad part is that it used to
belong to someone who needed it and is now in a nursing home unable to care for
herself and unable to return home ever again as her bed is now gone and her
room is cleaned. Not that I need an electric bed but who knows this may be an
option I need to consider somewhere down the road. I am planning to someday
live all on one level and to be able to enter the house or move anywhere on the
first floor without any obstructions and to have a convertible bedroom / living
room on the first floor with a bed hanging or concealed in the ceiling that
would be adjustable to my height by a push of a button to lower or raise the
bed to adjust it.
Still for all the
bad that is associated with Craigslist there is a an equal amount of good done
by having a free service that allows people to share items they no longer need
either for free or a little profit . A lot of these items though used are in
great shape and cost half to a quarter of what new would cost. As well some are
new, it is just that someone bought too much, or never took things back, or no
longer use something. Whatever it is that you need you can usually find it
somewhere on Craigslist just by simply going to the search box and entering in
a general description of what you want.
I try to at least
browse the daily free ads and have picked up work benches and other things for
free at times. Free is nice. As well in return I have given away plants in the springtime
that were going to go to waste if I didn’t do something with them. Perfectly
good tomato plants and other varieties of vegetable and flowering plants, and
have been surprised by the turn out both times I have done this with people coming from as far
away as Akron to pick up free plants. In some small way if they produced
tomatoes as I am sure they did, I helped feed some folks somewhere along the line
and that isn’t all bad. At the same time my effort was never wasted as I was able
to glean something from my time if nothing else satisfaction to know I helped
my fellow man in some way. It isn’t all bad. And as Grandma would have said,’ You
have to give to get’.
This will pay me
back in time, if nothing else I hope to have at least one person return and buy
something from me some day. And I have already seen the fruit of my labor as I do
have people coming back to purchase off me after getting something for nothing.
I don’t require them to, still they come and I’m forever grateful and know that
there is a reason I am doing what I am doing. I usually have an open house
since I started to have the greenhouse, and this year will be my third, there
is an older couple who I love to sit and talk to. They are both great. And this
year I believe I will take their advice and make a manure tea out of my compost
to fertilize with as opposed to using chemical fertilizers. The stuff I use is
what the Amish use and is water soluble, but still it is chemically produced
and not natural. I listen to my customers I have met off craigslist, and to all
people I meet along the way and enjoy giving away to those folks who take what I
have in excess and make something of it. A lot of this is possible because of Craigslist.
When you think about how effective Craigslist is in advertising, it will show
in the dust trails and parking problems I have when I offer my plants for free.
To imagine that here in the middle of nowhere people can find you with no
problem, it is amazing.
a hibiscus i still have some things are just not free
I sell my hay on
Craigslist also, and have one steady customer, and hopefully will have more as I
go along. It is free to advertise and a chance to rid yourself of those items
you have no use for anymore. If you haven’t used it in a year, then you are
hoarding it. That is the new rule, to live by. Now some things you need in case
of a major disaster and should never be sold or given away. Canners, jars and
lids , preferably full of vittles, are examples of some things you may want to
keep , a fishing pole might be nice , although there are few fish in the
streams around here I would eat on a regular basis , still it wouldn’t hurt to
have survival items around. At least one bicycle should be kept in good repair.
You never know what your needs are till you stop and think what you would
really need if everything went to hell in a hand basket. Maybe at least one hand
basket might be nice to strap to your bicycle.
There are things
I have to trade to buy the items I will need to build my new addition on and I intend
to look at what I have to sell and start utilizing Craigslist to sell those
items to buy what I need to build my new addition. I have a multitude of things
to sell, items somebody else needs as well as I need to be rid of. Some items
like my toilet I just replaced will be stripped out of the trailer and transferred
to the new addition. To me a toilet is a toilet; once you use a new one it is
kind of hard to tell the difference between new and used. They clean up well;
add a new seat and no one will ever know the difference. Anything I can borrow
from the old trailer and transfer to the new addition I plan on doing. I will salvage
the metal and wiring in the old trailer before disposing of the trailer part of
the old structure. I have some electrical and plumbing issues that should be
cleared up when the new addition is built saving me time and money and
aggravation of working on the old trailer.
In conclusion
today I just need to evaluate all I have in terms of what needs to be sold
versus what I need to buy and I should come out even, and my only real expense
will be the labor and time I put into this effort. In return I will have a
place I can come to anytime and enjoy the peaceful quietness of living in the
middle of nowhere. Feed my birds and
watch my ducks because someone has to watch them. Might as well be me and
hopefully I will be worry free about this part of my life, as much as one can
be.
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